The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1887-08-16

tic tIdiii- Ihcf laihcu hoIStf StSahi-
ship, oil. They were light-hearted,
careless and communicative, and the
train dropped them all along, at Yon-
kers, Riverdale, Hastings.
At a few minutes past five o'clock
Binninger stood on his graveled walk.
He had a little surprise in his pocket
for Lou. He waited for her to put her
head through the lilacs. He had grown
accustomed to this luxury of eHpecta-
ton and impatient welcome.
For the first time he was disap-
pointed. But in the three or four
seconds he stood there making noise
on the gravel with his cane, he noticed
how strangely still the afternoon was
against the blitheness of the morning.
Then he went into the house with .
sudden eagerness.
Boobies was tied in high chair at
the window. his head hanging over on
his arm. His eyes were red. He had
evidently cried himself to sleep. The
table stood empty in the middle of the
room. He had pictured the dinner
waiting and the copper tea urn singing
and steaming. The yOiceless place
maddened him.
LOFTY" he cried. encouragingly,
and then lmperatiyely, stamping his
foot
Lofty put her head TIN ough the
kitchen door. looking little scared.
where's Mrs. Binninger?"
"Shure, and thin she's not come yetr'
well. where's the telegram Why
don't you give me the dispatch?"
'Indade. there's nary dispatch at
ALL
He was losing his temper. He cursed
the country telegraph service.
''Get the dinner on the table. She'll
be starved to death when she gets here.
I'll 90 down and get the dispatch"
Nothing here, SIR" said the girl at
the telegraph Office. I'D a sent it up if
there had BEEN"
He'd wait for the next train. 1t
Numbered along in few minutes. He
told Charley Purdy to wait with a
hack. Shed be too tired to walk up
the hill. He saw the crowd get of. His
wife was not among them. His rest
lessness was growing at frightful
pace. She must be on the next train.
The harder he tried to think him.
self into a reasonable condition of
calmness the more resistless became
his fears. and his helplessness made
him furious. The one sharp thought
that kept singing in his mind was: IF
she had been detained she would have
telegraphed. Her first thought would
have been of me and my anxiety"
Then he began to realize that he did
not know exactly where she had gone
in the city. He telegraphed to two or
three friends. The answers were cruel
Have not See her to-day" Train
after train came along. 1t seemed TO
him that every mans darling was COM
ing home except his. 1t was seven
o'clock before he knew it. The sun
had gone down behind Piermont and
the river was bloody with color. His
growing impulse was to take down
train and fly after her. His reason
held up the city, with its million
people. and reminded him heartlessly
of the needle in haystack.
He tried to laugh at his fears: called
himself a fool. But no sooner had he
done so than up rose with terrible dis
tinctness the great, sweltering city,
with its myriad dangers, its colliding
life and death and the possibility of his
darling having fallen into some snare
or met with some accident. He in
vented thousand absurd reasons to ac-
count for her absence and silence, and
they only added to his misery by their
ingenious shallowneSs.
At nine o'clock a new and terrible
idea was springing up in his mind in
spite of every effort to keep it down. 1t
was this: "She will never come back"
He heard Boobies crying as he APP
preached the cottage. He thought
there was a strange, desolate pathos in
it he had never heard before. He felt
a cold sense of something down in his
sOul, dS III Il TeicullesS HUI WAS NOThlHS
its way into his consciousness.
He walked the floor with his teeth set
as though to keep the phantoms of his
imagination back
And so the long night passed with no
wife, and only the sobs of the child,
waking at intervals and calling for
MA"
As soon as it was light Lofty went
over and brought Mrs. Chamberlain,
neighbor. She looked at Binninger
with concern. His whole face had
changed.
She tried to cheer him with . wom-
ans finesse and duplicity.